A "Good Community" doesn't excuse content from being unfun

[Tridus]

Of course, "fun" is an opinion, but there is a large majority that don't find "following FATE train to kill a FATE boss, rinse repeat" fun.

I am one of those people, but what is "large majority" based on? We don't have any accurate way to gauge what the playerbase as a whole thinks.

I've heard people try and defend Eureka by saying that the community, and the stories that are formed from playing in Eureka is what makes it fun for them, and that's fine and dandy, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Eureka is good content.

Eureka IN ITSELF brings nothing new or exciting gameplay wise. It's simply grind X monster to spawn Y boss with less mechanics than a regular dungeon boss. Believe me, I've tried getting into Eureka multiple times, and I just couldn't connect with it, it's just so painfully boring. If I had to compare it to anything it'd be grinding fates in Northern Thanalan, except here there is slightly more "thought" put into it, like which mob to kill next, and which element to attune to (which are both rather brainless endeavors)

Well, yes. The funny thing? Lots of bad things are fun. I mean, the entire premise of MST3k is that if a movie is sufficiently bad it can cross over into "so bad it's good". All kinds of TV is awful but people still enjoy it.

Eureka can be bad and people can find the community in it fun at the same time. The two don't contradict each other. I mean, look at early MMOs. In a lot of ways they were terrible games, when you compare the gameplay to single player or small multiplayer equivalents. What they had going for them that no other game at the time did was the large, highly engaged communities that made the game greater than the sum of its parts. That's something a lot of people feel is missing in modern MMOs with the focus on solo friendly everything, instances, and cross server "you never see these people again" mentality.

There's certainly an appeal in watching the community take something with major flaws like Eureka has and create a whole play style designed around working around them for as many people as possible (the train). People are in there leading, raising, tracking spawns, chatting, cheering, all kinds of things. It's downright weird compared to the rest of the game.

And frankly? That's the best part. The game already has tons of fights and areas that are better executed than Eureka. But it has very little "group with a ton of people for 2 hours and venture forth as one big cooperative blob with the goal of killing stuff and having fun together while avoiding danger noodles". If that's what you were missing in the game, Eureka's a total success because it delivers it, in spite of everything that's wrong with it. (Hell, maybe because of some of what's wrong with it. If you could just solo your way up without issue, would the train meta and the whole environment supporting it have even formed?)

[RainDurell]

Eureka can be bad and people can find the community in it fun at the same time. The two don't contradict each other.

I never claimed that it's impossible to have a fun community in a bad piece of gameplay, I was saying that having a good community doesn't excuse it from having bad gameplay.

And frankly? That's the best part. The game already has tons of fights and areas that are better executed than Eureka. But it has very little "group with a ton of people for 2 hours and venture forth as one big cooperative blob with the goal of killing stuff and having fun together while avoiding danger noodles".

There is no good reason why they can't make the big zone where you can group up with a bunch of people be interesting gameplay-wise at the same time. Heck, they spent 17 months of development, and the only fun we find in it is EACHOTHER rather than the thing they spent 17 months on.

[Mahrze]

There is no good reason why they can't make the big zone where you can group up with a bunch of people be interesting gameplay-wise at the same time. Heck, they spent 17 months of development, and the only fun we find in it is EACHOTHER rather than the thing they spent 17 months on.

When life gives you lemons, make a lemon cheesecake. : ok_hand: